Benoit Tessier / Reuters
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COVID-19 – Not taking exams or putting your health at risk? Students in the 2nd year of eco-management at Paris-Est Créteil University (Upec) face a dilemma: for the start of the school year, Monday January 4, they will have to go to the university to take their exams, so that other sectors organize them remotely.
Faced with the number of new cases of coronavirus which does not weaken, especially after the holidays, some students have launched a petition on change.org in order to demand that their exams take place at a distance from Monday. In five days, the petition collected 200 signatures.
“The management of Upec commits the same error as in September with the UFR of right”, explains to Parisian Sami *, 19 years old, in L2 eco-management. The latter refers to the re-entry of students in the 2nd year of law that the faculty had organized face-to-face, at Creteil. This caused the saturation of the amphitheatres, with “students seated on the ground and even around the teacher’s desk, corridors overflowing with students stuck together tightly, the speech of a teacher not convinced by the usefulness of the mask”, explains the media.
Sami is worried today to see the same pattern occur, especially since a “new strain of the virus is circulating”. “Most of the students saw a lot of people during these holidays. Bringing us in, taking public transport, spending days next to each other during these exams is a dangerous action for our health ”, he denounces.
″ Avoid dispersing yourself ”
A concern also reinforced by the fact that, according to him, the management of the university has not communicated any information on the procedure to follow or a possible health protocol. “Do we have to arrive early to spread out the flows and avoid crossings? Is social distancing planned? If yes, how? We have little communication and very few responses to our requests ”.
As for possible fears of cheating during the tests, Sami explains: “Management fears cheating. However, impossible to really cheat on our tests, because they require above all to apply a logic. If we haven’t understood it, if we haven’t worked, it doesn’t change anything to be at home with the lessons at hand. On the other hand, it is true that it can reassure us: in the event of blackout, one can check a point in a course for example. ”
For their part, those in charge of L2 sent an email to the students three days before the start of the school year. The Parisian was able to consult. Ensuring that social distancing will be respected, they advise them to “avoid dispersing”. “It would be much more helpful if you devoted all of your energy to your work and revisions,” he replies.
Reception limited to “small groups of 10 students”
“As of the week of January 4, you will be able to welcome on convocation the students newly entered in higher education in a situation of great vulnerability”, announced in mid-December the Minister of Higher Education, Frédérique Vidal, to university presidents , whose premises have been largely emptied since the end of October.
Concretely, there will be “a gradual resumption of face-to-face teaching, initially limited to the reception of small groups of 10 students maximum,” the ministry told AFP at the end of December.
Each university being pedagogically autonomous and facing different organizational constraints, “the establishments may take a few days to organize the return to the site of the students, between January 4 and 10”.
Instructions that seem very difficult to keep in Créteil. Indeed, the partial of the 2nd year of eco-management at the University of Paris-Est concern 300 students who must all be present on Monday.
* The first name has been changed
See also on The HuffPost: This student has to climb a tree to take his online courses
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